How the 538 model works

Here’s a explanation by Nate Silver of how his Senate prediction model works. 10,000 words, and denser than the typical FiveThirtyEight post, but it’s food for thought if you’ve been curious about what’s going on under the hood of FiveThirtyEight’s flagship product.

Make sure to click through to the footnotes – lots of links to subsidiary analyses from the past that explicate some of the interesting tidbits Silver and co. have built up over time.